The Terror of War

The Terror of War, widely known as Napalm Girl, is a photograph taken on June 8, 1972 in the village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam, showing a nine year old girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked and screaming down a road after being severely burned by a mistaken South Vietnamese napalm strike, amid other fleeing children and soldiers. The photograph was credited on publication to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, though later investigation raised questions about whether it may instead have been taken by a Vietnamese stringer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, and the Associated Press and World Press Photo have taken differing positions on the attribution while the image's content and impact are not in dispute. It won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and was named World Press Photo of the Year for 1972, and it became one of the most reproduced and most consequential images of the Vietnam War, widely credited with intensifying American public opposition to the war and with shaping decades of debate over the ethics of publishing images of suffering children.